


Dancing Lights

by Jimena



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, I just had feels about these two disaster humans, Spoilers for Campaign 2 Episode 18, i dunno man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 20:11:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14626158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jimena/pseuds/Jimena
Summary: Beau tries to apologize in her own way, with a little nudge from Frumpkin





	Dancing Lights

The cat was glaring at her again; she could feel it.

Beau glanced back from where she was perched on the back of the cart, nominally keeping watch on the road behind them. Sure enough, a pair of slit-pupiled yellow eyes stared back at her, unblinking. It was unnerving.

She scowled and turned back to the road. She could stare down a pack of gnolls without flinching, sling insults at a raging giant; hell, she could face the disappointment and disdain of her parents with a quip and a sneer, but apparently the baleful glare of a housecat was too much. She snorted, mentally kicking herself for being so pathetic.

“I know I fucked up, alright?” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. “Stop looking at me like that.” She glanced up to make sure Caleb wasn’t seeing through his familiar’s eyes, but he was still engrossed in the book he’d been reading for the last three hours, lips moving silently in rapt attention while Nott slept curled up in a ball next to him.

She returned her attention to the road. Still nothing. To the cat. Still glaring. What she wouldn’t give for a bandit attack right now, a pack of ravenous beasts, her own personal sinkhole, _anything_.

“How much longer is it gonna be?” she asked loudly.

“About a half hour less than the last time you asked,” Fjord answered from where he was driving the horses up front, exasperation clear in his voice. “Why are you so concerned about when we get there?”

Beau shrugged, kicking her legs against the back of the cart in a burst of nervous energy. “Call me curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

_If only_ , Beau thought with another glance at Frumpkin. Yep, still glaring.

She knew for a fact that curiosity didn't kill the cat. If it had she'd be dead many times over by now, always sticking her nose in places it didn't belong. But that didn't mean her curiosity didn't have consequences.

She hadn’t meant to push so hard. To be fair, she hadn’t expected _that_ when she’d asked what she thought was a simple question, but what she’d intended by her question and what Caleb had felt forced to reveal were two very different things, and intentions didn’t count for shit where it mattered. No, she’d hurt Caleb, and that wasn’t something she could fix with her fists. Fixing something like this required words, and she was no good with those.

Beau fell back into the cart with a groan, arms outstretched, staring up at the clouds passing by overhead as she tried to come up with some sort of solution to her predicament.

“You’ve been awfully grumpy lately,” a teasing voice said. “Did someone get turned down by a pretty girl before we left? Or is this just the natural state of things when you don’t have things to punch?”

His words hit a little too close to home. “Fuck off, Molly,” Beau said, sending a rude gesture his way, though there was no real bite to her words.

“Beau,” Fjord called back over his shoulder, “We’ve talked about this.”

Beau barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, sitting back up instead. She pasted her biggest, fakest smile across her face. “My bad. _Kindly_ fuck off, Molly.”

Molly, damn him, just laughed and nudged his horse forward to ride ahead of the cart with Yasha. It was almost a shame; she could have used a good fight right now to distract her.

Fjord just sighed loudly, shaking his head while Jester giggled next to him.

Beau shook her head in annoyance, letting out a low growl of frustration when her goggles slipped down over her face. Apparently it was just going to be one of those days. She tore the goggles from her head with a sharp tug. The strap had been coming loose all day, and she might as well fix it while she had nothing better to do than stew in her own thoughts.

Beau regarded the goggles in her hands silently, adjusting the strap back and forth, back and forth, long after they should have been fixed. She looked up. Frumpkin had at least laid down, but he was still watching her with a wide-eyed stare, tail lashing furiously from side to side. She looked back down at the goggles and with a sharp twist of her hands that would have made the strap painfully tight against her own skull, came to a decision.

“Think fast,” she said, tossing the goggles. He didn’t of course, because it was _Caleb_ , and now she had another thing to feel guilty about as he rubbed the red mark rapidly blooming across his cheek and fumbled for the book he’d dropped in the panic of seeing a foreign object come flying towards his face.

“Really, Beau?” Fjord sighed again in that disappointed tone that always made her grit her teeth and try, _try_ to be better.

“‘S’not by fault he didn’t catch ‘em,” she muttered, crossing her arms with a scowl. “I did warn him.”

Caleb bent down, retrieving the goggles with a bemused expression on his face. He held them up and glanced her way. “And what am I supposed to do with these?”

This time Beau did roll her eyes. “Wear them, duh. They help you see in the dark.”

Caleb frowned. “I know what they do. Don't you need them?"

Beau shrugged one shoulder. “I've got you and your fancy dancing lights, don't I?”

The words came out as more of a challenge than she'd intended, as they always did, but she resisted the urge to wince. She wasn't in the habit of mincing words, and besides, it wasn't quite _not_ a challenge.

She forged on ahead when Caleb remained silent. “I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. That’s how this teamwork thing works, mutual trust and all that shit.”

“It seems foolish to place yourself at a disadvantage for my sake,” Caleb said slowly, turning the goggles over and over again in his hands, almost like he did with his diamond when he was nervous.

“I’m not.” That at least she could say with confidence. “Give me a little credit here, Caleb. I’m good at what I do.” She looked off to the side and rubbed a hand through the shorter hair growing in on the side of her head. “But I’m better when I’ve got you backing me up, yeah?”

“I see.”

Beau’s already limited tolerance for polite conversation was wearing thin. “And now you also see in the dark. Just take the damn goggles, Caleb.”

Caleb looked up at her then, seeming to search her face for something before he nodded to himself. “I consider these a loan then,” he said quietly. “You may have them back whenever you wish. Thank you, Beauregard.”

“Whatever,” Beau said with a wave of her hand. “Just don’t lose them or anything, because I’m not finding you another pair. Now, let’s see how they fit.”

Caleb obligingly pulled the goggles over his head, adjusting them slightly until they sat snugly on his face. He turned to her. “How do I look?”

“You look like a nerd.” She reached out and punched his arm lightly.  “It suits you.”

“Ow.”

She reached past him as he rubbed his arm, rummaging around in Jester’s bag for a book that didn’t look like it’d be complete garbage, eventually settling for one that looked like it’d provide at least a few minutes of entertainment if nothing else. “It’s your turn to keep watch, by the way.”

Caleb nodded and moved to the back of the cart as she settled back against the side of the wagon, careful to avoid the sleeping goblin as she wedged herself into as comfortable position as she could find between their supplies. She cracked the book open, squinting to read the words in the dim light before the sun set completely. Soft light flickered above her, and she looked up to see a small glowing orb suspended in the air over her right shoulder.

A quick glance to the back revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Caleb was looking out behind them, idly brushing his fingers off on his coat, Frumpkin now draped around his neck like a scarf. The cat turned his gaze her way and blinked slowly.

Beau grinned and returned to her reading. It didn’t make things right, not by a long shot, but it was a start.

**Author's Note:**

> I reeeeeally don't have time for fic ideas to be floating around my head and driving me crazy til they're written, but uh, this one wouldn't go away, so hope ya'll enjoyed.


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